More in ‘West Germany’

World

Beyond Berlin

A Cold War anniversary reminds us not to take history for granted
By Seth Lipsky | 7:00 AM Nov 4, 2009

Next week the world will mark the fall of the Berlin Wall, which took place 20 years ago. It happens that I was there at the time. I think of it as one of the most memorable events I’ve covered in a long newspaper life, though it is not unalloyed. It instructs that in our ...

Film

Mindless Violence

The Baader-Meinhof Gang had all the brains of an action flick
By Todd Gitlin | 7:00 AM Sep 1, 2009

The exploits of the Red Army Faction, better known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, may be the subject of a new film, but, in truth, the group was movie material from its inception.
The Gang, which paralyzed West Germany in the 1970s, was a hallucinatory cult of would-be Maoist urban guerrillas who over the better part of ...